According to their report, Unilever, The Body Shop, IKEA, Target Corporation, L’Oreal, Colgate/Palmolive, Procter & Gamble, and Johnson & Johnson have already pledged to stop using microbeads in their “rinse-off personal care products”. According the press release for a recent study on the spread and effects of the miniscule culprits, that’s enough to cover 300 tennis courts each day. Calvelli said that the beads appears to be tasty snacks to fish, amphibians and other aquatic life, but in fact they are toxic to consume because of some of the chemicals used in their manufacturing and the pollutants they absorb in the water.
Advertisement
To cite an example, these “microbeads” can cause deaths in corals by blocking their digestive systems, restricting their ability to digest the nutrients.
Out of your toothpaste to your facial wash, plastic microbeads are in all places.
Microbeads have been found in every ocean and in smaller bodies of water, including the Great Lakes and the Los Angeles River.
“Part of this problem can now start with brushing your teeth in the morning”, she continued.
“Contaminants like these microbeads are not something our wastewater treatment plants were built to handle, and the overall amount of contamination is huge”, Green said.
Another 800 trillion microbeads end up in sludge from sewage plants.
Green cautioned that people across the United States were facing a plastic crisis and they didn’t even know the problem.
“Microbeads are just one of many types of microplastic found in aquatic habitats and in the gut content of wildlife”, study lead author Chelsea Rochman, the David H. Smith Conservation Research Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California – Davis, said in the release. “We’ve demonstrated in earlier research that microplastic of the identical kind, measurement and form as many microbeads can switch contaminants to animals and trigger poisonous results”. These days, microbeads are used in all kinds of products from toothpastes to face washes. Therefore, scientists are urging legislation to ban the microbeads. They say that public support for the effort is also growing.
The past few years have seen use of microbeads in beauty and personal care products increase significantly; researchers are saying that this increase might have had a strong impact on our environment. Additionally, some producers may claim that their microbeads are biodegradable when they are only partially biodegradable and so on. Connecticut, New Jersey, Colorado have implemented regulations or bans on the plastic products as well.
Advertisement
The 8 trillion beads that enter aquatic habitats represent only 1 percent of the total amount of the plastic pieces that are disposed of through drains and other sources each day.
